Book 29: Good Calories, Bad Calories

Given my suggestibility, you might think that having finished this book, I have now gone low-carb. I am not a low-carb person--it is virtually impossible to be truly low-carb and vegetarian/vegan, so it is not really my thing. But I did find the book interesting anyway. I have given some thought to being more cautious about refined carbohydrates like flour (even whole grain flours).



The book is so full of research that it's hard to imagine how scientists have not come to these conclusions--Taubes makes it sound like it's *so obvious* that insulin is the issue, not calories. But it makes me wonder how it could be so obvious and yet missed by so many.

In light of my intermittent fasting, I did like his explanation of waves of hunger possibly representing the body switching from using glucose as fuel to using glycogen and ketone bodies, and I like the idea that the brain might run better on ketone bodies than glucose! Bring on the fasting for brain power.

This is a 26-hour beast. Woe be unto the one who loses her place in the middle on an iPod Shuffle.

Book 28: The FastDiet

After I finished reading Food in Jars, I bought a water bath canner. Before I even started reading The FastDiet, I started intermittent fasting. Clearly, I'm very suggestible.



We watched the BBC Horizon documentary called Eat, Fast and Live Longer and jumped right in. I knew about research that showed that people who restrict calories essentially for their entire lives have longer, healthier lifespans, but most of us (including me) aren't superhuman enough to be able to do that. I'd also heard an episode of our local NPR station's program Radio West about the benefits of fasting. I've fasted for religious purposes, but not for health reasons. And having been pregnant and/or nursing for many a year, I haven't fasted in a long time.

The book gave some important details that have helped us have successful fasts, and it has fasting meal ideas, which are also really helpful. But I know there is more research out there about fasting and health, and I would have liked to read more about it. There was a little too much anecdata--I really didn't want to read tweets from 5:2 fasters. The cover (though I had the Kindle version) also looks like something designed in the 1980s. Maybe that's trendy now and I'm hopelessly un-trendy?

Overall, the idea of fasting is great, but the book was a little bit goofy. I personally have discovered that fasting won't cure you of a sinus infection. How's that for anecdata?

Book 27: Food in Jars

I almost feel like this doesn't count, because there wasn't too much narrative or exposition in this book; it includes a lot of recipes, and I can't claim to have actually read every ingredient and every stop in the process. But I did read most of them, so I'm counting it!



The recipes and ideas in this book sound scrumptious! I was drawn to the book because of the premise that one can preserve small quantities at a time, instead of putting up dozens of quarts of something. I am determined do some preserving this year.

Book 26: 1Q84

I'm feeling a bit like this after finishing this book:



But Murakami said, "If you can't understand it without an explanation, you can't understand it with an explanation."




I suppose I am doomed not to understand this, then. Not that I didn't like it--no, I found it very hard to put down. I really like Murakami's style. But there seemed to be so many loose ends that I thought were important that were never tied up.

The good news is that I want to read more Murakami. The bad news is that I really didn't understand the ending.

Book 25: A Man for All Seasons

Having read the first two books of Hilary Mantel's Thomas Cromwell trilogy, I knew I had to read this, to get another (fictionalized) view of Sir Thomas More.

 

I liked it a lot. Sir Thomas More gives some stirring speeches about conscience, and the Common Man has some interesting scenes, too. The stage directions were so detailed that I could picture quite clearly what the staging looks like. Now I just need to see it staged. The film was released in 1966 and won an Academy Award. It's on my Netflix queue now--we shall see if it lives up to my expectations!

Book 24: The Story of Stuff

Do you remember the 20-minute Internet film from a few years ago, by the same name?



This was a great book, but it does feel really overwhelming to tackle these enormous, system-wide problems of toxic processes, toxic products, and toxic disposal. There seems to be a huge need for change, especially among people like me--developed world consumers who buy and discard a lot of stuff.

Annie Leonard details the many actions we can take as individuals to keep our homes free-er from toxic stuff. We can also perhaps ever-so-slightly reduce demand for cheap junk (that, in the process of being made, produces a lot of detrimental effects for people in other communities) that doesn't make us happy or more fulfilled, either.

A few ideas that really struck me were that if something is too toxic for my child to play around or use, then it is too toxic for any child. Also, I have long realized that there is no "away" that things get thrown to--no magic place where "trash" ceases to bother anyone. But I didn't realize just how damaging and wasteful landfills are.

Book 23: The World Until Yesterday

This was a great book. It discusses the way all humans lived until the advent of agriculture and larger societies like chiefdoms and states, which was not that long ago in the grand scheme of things. Our ancestors were all living this way and, dare I say, our bodies and minds are designed to live a more hunter-gatherer lifestyle.



I especially loved the chapters about childrearing, treatment of elders, and health and diet. I wish he had gone into a bit more detail about health and physical activity, in particular. There are some things I'd like to incorporate into our lives, like more connections between people, and less sugar and salt in our diets.